Our colleague Pavel Mazheiko has been released with the following statement: the grounds for detention have disappeared. At the same time the criminal case is still being investigated.
Belsat journalist Pavel Mazheika was released after 72 hours of arrest, our correspondent reports. He did not sign an undertaking not to leave.
“Ales Pushkin‘s exhibition was photographed, the policemen came for almost a week. On March 26th I was asked to come to the police station for two hours. When I came there, I was detained and taken to the prosecutor’s office, where they asked for explanations concerning the exhibition, but, as I understand it, there was a document ordering to institute criminal proceedings,” said Pavel Mazheika.
From 26 to 29 March the journalist was kept in Hrodna prison.
On March 26th , Hrodna Prosecutor’s Office brought a criminal case against the head of the private establishment “Center of City Life” and Belsat journalist Pavel Mazheika and the artist Ales Pushkin and others for committing deliberate actions, aimed at the rehabilitation and justification of Nazism under part 3 of article 130 of the Criminal Code. Pavel Mazheika was summoned for interrogation and detained.
According to the prosecutor’s office, on March 19, the exhibition in the “Center of City life” showed a portrait of Yauhen Zhykhar with an automatic gun on his shoulder, painted by Pushkin. According to the case materials, during the German occupation in the summer of 1944 Zhykhar was trained in the special unit of the Abwehr and in December of the same year was put by the Nazis in Polatsk region.
